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Leaders of the New School

Essence

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Fall/Winter 2025

How Historically Black Colleges and Universities are defying the odds and creating innovators in business, fashion and STEM

- By Rachel Ruff

Leaders of the New School

Reese Winston, a senior at Spelman, is passionate about using tech to solve real-world problems.

We've all witnessed the emergence of alumni from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). HBCU students and recent graduates are everywhere, seizing their moment and breaking into the ever-changing job market across fashion, business and STEM. Cases in point: Beyoncé's timeless Renaissance World Tour looks were curated by Hampton University alum and influential costume designer Shiona Turini. Morehouse College’s DeAndre Brown, better known as “The Corporate Baddie,” achieved viral success on social media as a trusted source of astute (and hilarious) career advice for navigating the workplace. And the Florida A&M University freshmen Kaeden Levarity, Logan Kendall, Jade White, Micah Lee, Jackson Norflis and Layla Brown won a total of $20,000 from Ford at a national STEM competition for their environmentally conscious robot. HBCU alums are constantly reminding the world that their institutions are not relics of the past but engines for the future.

But across the country, the earth beneath the feet of recent graduates feels more like quicksand than solid ground, with artificial intelligence shrinking the availability of entry-level jobs. The era of “Just apply—the worst they can say is no” is over. Now, the worst they can say is “We need three years of work experience” or “We don’t need you.” In this uncertainty, HBCUs continue to stand steady. As Jelani M. Favors, vice president of the Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute at UNCF (United Negro College Fund), writes in Shelter in a Time of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership and Activism, “Black colleges were an essential, and noncollapsible, space that oriented and trained Black youths to serve as agents for justice.”

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